"Ideas for Story, Info Tracking, and Community"

- Co-op Horror - Investigating scary place with others, get separated. - 3D
- PC

Expand the story

• What is the setting? Do you know the time and/or location that this game takes place? How important is this to the story?
  
  The setting would be an old mansion, or some sort of mental asylum/hospital. The setting is important to the story because it would provide the atmospheric horror. The game could be set in either modern times, or even earlier times like the 1900s.
  
  
• What is the background/history of this game? What events have led up to the point at which we enter the game? How much of this does the player need to know?
  
  There have been mysterious things going on at the place of interest which has lead to a team of investigators (The player and friends) being hired to investigate and solve what's going on the place of the happenings. All the player knows at first is that odd things are happening, like disappearances, odd noises, etc. The players would learn more as the game goes on.
  
  
• What is the current situation as we play the game? What are the player's goals? What challenges or obstacles are there to overcome? This is some of the most relevant information to develop game play.
  
  The current situation as we play the game is that the players all start of together, they must investigate the place of interest as there is something going on there, but nobody knows what yet. That would be the players goal, figure out what's going on. There will be challenges and obstacles to overcome such as puzzles, roaming "monsters" that the players will have to avoid and hide from, but to go along with these obstacles there will be lots of exploration with the location (Old Mansion, Mental Hospital, etc) adding atmospheric horror, which will be the main fear source of the game. Atmospheric horror allows the players the be scared, but not be in danger of dying and having to reload a save, or perhaps die moments away from a check-point. The "monsters" would not be able to kill the player, but possibly injure them in some way, forcing them to find some kind of aid for the injury. With everyone starting the game together, some event may happen to separate the party, splitting the group into two groups and then maybe even later splitting those two groups of two into four people alone in different parts of the location
  
  
• What characters are involved? Who are they? Would the player interact with them? Would multiple players take those roles?
  
  The characters involved are the players, who are investigating the place of interest. Each player would be an investigator. Other characters could be people or "monsters" that are withing the place of interest. Before arriving at the place of interest, the players could meet a mysterious man that hires them to investigate this place. For the monsters, the player could possibly interact with them, but even just seeing these people/"monsters" could provide fear.
  
  
• Do we know anything about the future of this story? Does it depend on what happens in the game?
  
  As the players investigate the place of interest, the story will unfold and what is going on at this place will begin to become more clear. If a system were made for this, depending on the players actions, there could be multiple endings. One ending could consist of finding out what is actually going on at this place, while another ending could consist of whatever is happening to happen to the players, they would know what's going on, but not be able to tell the man who hired them since they have now disappeared/died or whatever.

         Identify and track information

• High Importance Information
  - Battery level for Flashlight
  - How many batteries the player has left over
  - Mini-map?
  
• Medium Importance Information
  - Menu to access any documents/papers found by the player if they ever want to re-read them. Or by chance one of the papers had a code on it that they need to open or access something.
  - Map menu so the player can see what rooms they've explored. (Explored rooms can be shown differently from rooms not yet explored). If a room has an object/item that the player needs to advance or do something it could also be marked differently on the map in order to assist the player in advancing the plot and getting further in the game without the player having to spend time frustratingly searching for a small item that they need to advance.

Considering the kind of technology that you included in this Mechanics/Story/Aesthetics/Technology combination, how would you provide access to the high, medium, and low importance data?

• Battery level could be included in the players GUI, but amount of batteries or other items they may have could be displayed in an inventory that would be the player's bag/pouch they carry around. 
• Documents the player has found could be kept in another area of the players inventory (A different tab). The same inventory would be used for items and documents, but separate tabs would be provided so that the inventory would not be cluttered by books/papers when simply looking to see how many batteries you have, or if you have a key for this door.

Create community. Many games are successful because of their social aspect, but this can look very different from game to game. Consider the following questions:

• How many players are appropriate for your game? Is it single-player? Multiple players working individually? Multiple players working as a team?
  
  The game would be appropriate for up to 4 players. The game would consist of all these players working together to solve the mystery and the place of interest, but players would end up separated, but still working together in order to escape / find out what's going on.
  
• If there are multiple players, are they playing in the same room, on the same device? Are they remote, playing online? If they are remote, should they be able to communicate with each other? Would their characters be communicating in the game, or would the players be talking to each other outside of the game world?
  
  The players of the game would play together through online means. For communication, the players would be able to talk to each other, but after being separated the players could find walkie-talkies or even some kind of communications where the game takes place. The players could of course talk to each other outside of the game world using programs like Skype or Discord. But if the players would like more immersion then they can choose to only use the communications that the game provides them.
  
• Is there an AI (artificial intelligence) engine to compete against?
  
  The main thing that players would compete against would be place itself. There could be characters or "monsters" that the player would have to not necessarily compete against, but hide from and be scared of, providing more horror to the situation.
  
• Should there be a community *outside* of the actual gameplay? Would interactions between community members involve conversations / forum discussions? What do you think they would need or want to talk about? Could/should any trading or buying/selling take place-- things like objects, tools, ideas, etc? In what other ways would you ideally see players interacting with each other outside of the game?
  
  The bulk of the community for a game like this would be suggestions for the game, or possible bugs that have been found in the game that need fixing. It would be a story-based game, so there would not be any trading or buying/selling of in-game items. Some people could go to the community for help in a certain part of the game if they're stuck. For players interacting with each other outside of the game, that could include players looking for a group of people to play the game with, since the game would be a multiplayer cooperative game.